The SSHM Lecture 2024

Professor Lauren Kassell asks fundamental questions about astrological medicine from the perspectives of astrologers, medical practitioners, and their clients and patients. It centres on practices in seventeenth-century England, and ranges from the reception of Greek and Arabic texts in twelfth-century Europe to debates recurring at least until the nineteenth century about the physics of spirit and matter and the risks of choosing superstition over reason. It argues that astrological medicine is a shorthand for multiple distinct traditions and activities located in specific historical moments. Along the way, it reflects on what she has learned about the histories of science and medicine by returning to astrological medicine throughout her career.

Lauren Kassell is Professor of History of Science at the Department of History at the European University Institute, Florence, and Professor of History of Science and Medicine at the Department of History and Philosophy, University of Cambridge (on leave).

Image credit: Lauren Kassell, Michael Hawkins, Robert Ralley, John Young, Joanne Edge, Janet Yvonne Martin-Portugues, and Natalie Kaoukji (eds.), ‘Casebooks’, The casebooks of Simon Forman and Richard Napier, 1596–1634: a digital edition, https://casebooks.lib.cam.ac.uk, [accessed 11 October 2024].

Host or Publisher Society for the Social History of Medicine